PhotoPlus Preview: Bob Sacha’s Top 5 Video Production Tips

Bob Sacha, an award-winning director and cinematographer and former staff producer at MediaStorm, will return to PhotoPlus Expo this year to offer the seminar “How to Produce Award-Winning Video.” Sacha will explain how to use audio as the foundation of storytelling, with tips about how to interview subjects to elicit surprising information and authentic emotion; how to switch your visual thinking from still photography mode to video mode, and other topics essential to good video production. For a preview of his seminar, he shared with us his top five tips for shooting video:

1) Sound is the most crucial element of video, more important than any visual or image. People will watch a film with great sound and bad visuals. But people will not watch any film with bad sound.

2) Use a tripod. Only amateurs shoot video without a tripod or monopod.

3) Use a wireless microphone on your subject all the time, and always use a lav mic for interviews. If you’re only using the camera mic, your sound is destined for heartache.

4) Shooting a sequences is the video version of writing a sentence. This is the best example of how to show a sequence from the smart folks at StillMotion. If you shot every scene this way, your video would be awesome. Also, think in terms of scenes, with a beginning, middle and end. Avoid thinking about random shots used to cover the interview, which is also known as B-roll.

5) For multimedia/video, you should shoot at least 50 percent close-up or super close-up. If you don’t have at least one shot of every person with nothing but their eyeball filling your viewfinder, you’re not close enough. The reason is because most people will be watching your work on their smartphone. On small screens, close-ups work better than wide or medium shots.